It's a great time in game audio these days. As we move forward in the current console generation, several emerging examples of best practices in audio implementation have been exposed through articles, demonstrations, and video examples.

Even though in some ways it feels like the race towards next gen has just begun, some of the forward-thinking frontrunners in the burgeoning field of Technical Sound Design have been establishing innovative techniques and pulling off inspirational audio since the starting gun was fired over four years ago with the release of the Xbox 360.

It's a good feeling to know that there are people out there doing the deep thinking in order to bring you some of the richest audio experiences in games available today. In some ways, everyone working in game audio is trying to solve a lot of the same problems.

Whether you're implementing a dynamic mixing system, interactive music, or a living, breathing ambient system, the chances are good that your colleagues are slaving away trying to solve similar problems to support their own titles.

In trying to unravel the mystery of what makes things tick, I'll be taking a deeper look at our current generation of game sound and singling out several pioneers and outspoken individuals who are leaving a trail of interactive sonic goodness (and publicly available information) in their wake. Stick around for the harrowing saga of the technical sound designer in today's multi-platform maelstrom.

Reverb

Reverb is one area that has been gaining ground since the early days of EAX on the PC platform, and more recently thanks to its omnipresence in audio middleware toolsets.

It has become standard practice to enable reverb within a single game level, and apply a single preset algorithm to a subset of the sound mix. Many developers have taken this a step further and created reverb regions that will call different reverb presets based on the area the player is currently located. This allows the reverb to change based on predetermined locations using predefined reverb settings.

Furthermore, these presets have been extended to areas outside of the player region, so that sounds coming from a different region can use the region and settings of their origin in order to get their reverberant information. Each of these scenarios is valid in an industry where you must carefully balance all of your resources, and where features must play to the strengths of your game design.

While preset reverb and reverb regions have become a standard and are a welcome addition to a sound designer's toolbox, there is still the potential to push further into realtime. By calculating the reverb of a sound in the game at runtime either through the calculation of geometry at the time a sound is played or through the use of reverb convolution.

Leading the charge in 2007 with Crackdown, Realtime Worlds set out to bring the idea of realtime convolution reverb to the front line.

"When we heard the results of our complex Reverb/Reflections/Convolution or 'Audio-Shader' system in Crackdown, we knew that we could make our gunfights sound like that, only in realtime! Because we are simulating true reflections on every 3D voice in the game, with the right content, we could immerse the player in a way never before heard."- Raymond Usher, to Team Xbox

Crackdown

So, what is realtime Reverb using ray tracing and convolution in the context of a per-voice implementation? Here's a quick definition of ray tracing as it applies to physics calculation:

"In physics, ray tracing is a method for calculating the path of waves or particles through a system with regions of varying propagation velocity, absorption characteristics, and reflecting surfaces. Under these circumstances, wavefronts may bend, change direction, or reflect off surfaces, complicating analysis.

Ray tracing solves the problem by repeatedly advancing idealized narrow beams called rays through the medium by discrete amounts. Simple problems can be analyzed by propagating a few rays using simple mathematics. More detailed analysis can be performed by using a computer to propagate many rays." - Wikipedia

On the other side of the coin you have the concept of convolution: "In audio signal processing, convolution reverb is a process for digitally simulating the reverberation of a physical or virtual space. It is based on the mathematical convolution operation, and uses a pre-recorded audio sample of the impulse response of the space being modeled.

To apply the reverberation effect, the impulse-response recording is first stored in a digital signal-processing system. This is then convolved with the incoming audio signal to be processed." - Wikipedia

What you end up with is a pre-recorded impulse response of a space being modified (or convoluted) by the ray-traced calculations of the surrounding physical spaces. What this allows the sound to communicate in realtime is a greater sense of location and dynamics as sound is triggered from a point in 3D space, and sound is reflected off of the geometry of the immediate surrounding area.

You can hear the results of their effort in every gunshot, explosion, physics object, and car radio as you travel through the concrete jungle of Crackdown's Pacific City. It's worth noting that Ruffian Games' Crackdown 2 will be hitting shelves soon, as will Realtime Worlds' new MMO All Points Bulletin.

With a future for convolution reverb implied by recent news of Audiokinetic's Wwise toolset, let's hope the idea of realtime reverb continues to play an integral part in the next steps towards runtime spatialization.